Due to some neighbors flying BLM flags, Thin blue line flags, and other opinion flags, our HOA decided last month that we’re only allowed to fly the USA flag, and nothing else. The day after the decision, we receive an email that someone reported our Pride flag (that we had in our house since 2016), and that we needed to take it down. We complied and removed the flag. Looking through our new rules, we noticed that removable lights are permitted without restriction so... we bought 6 colored flood lights, and we washed our house in pride colors. A little less subtle than our simple flag. A lot more fun for anyone complaining about the flag itself and what it represents.

memon17

When I was in my early twenties, I worked at a supermarket. I should note that I was a pretty reliable employee. I was never late, in fact, I often got in early, and I rarely called in sick. At the time this happened, I had not called in sick for 9 months, and even then, the manager had sent me home.

I had been up all night, swinging between burning hot and freezing cold so I was obviously feverish, and I had been throwing up 'at both ends' shall we say. At one point at about 2 am I was on the toilet, with my head in the sink, utterly miserable. I must have passed out because the next thing I knew I was lifting my head off the sink and it was 7 am. I was due to start work at 12 that day but that obviously wasn't going to happen.

So I called up the manager. Let's call the manager Steve. Steve was known for being a real a-hole. He never believed anyone who called in sick except his best buds (usually other managers, never lowly staff), but often called in sick himself (a lot of the time we knew it was because he was hungover and not actually sick). The conversation went as follows:

Me: Hey Steve, sorry, I can't come in. I'm sick.

Steve: With what?

Me: I don't know. I think it might be the flu. I've been up all night being sick, and I have a fever.

Steve: Don't be stupid. If you had the flu you'd be completely knocked out. I need you in. Come in or you're fired.

Me: I can't. I just told you I can't stop vomiting. I passed out.

Steve: (growling angrily) Either come in or bring a doctors note, or you're fired!

In the UK, you are legally allowed to self-certify for 5 days. This means you can tell your employer you are sick and you do not need a doctors note. If you're sick for more than 5 days, you then need a note. It is also illegal to demand a doctors note during the self-certify period.

I knew this, but I was terrified. This was during the recession. I couldn't afford to lose my job. So I got myself dressed. Almost passed out trying to do so. Then trudged to the doctors some 25 minutes walk away.

I end up sitting in the doctor's office for a little over an hour, which for walk-in was pretty good. I get in to see the doctor and she is furious at me for coming in. You're not supposed to come to the doctors when you have a cold or flue, and of course I knew I should be able to self certify. She told me as such, saying I shouldn't be here and should have stayed at home.

I then explained what had happened with Steve and how he had threatened to fire me over this and I couldn't afford to lose my job - I was struggling as it was. My doctor turned her anger towards my manager. She asked if I got sick pay from the company, and I said yes.

"He wants a sick note does he," the doctor says. "Okay. I'll give him a sick note.

Now, my manager just wanted a note confirming I was sick, but instead my doctor wrote something along the lines of this:

'[My Name] has come to the surgery because [manager name] has insisted she come in, in spite of the fact that this is illegal and all employees are allowed to self certify. Due to being forced to make this unnecessary and highly dangerous trip when the patient is ill, has a fever of 39°C, and almost passed out in the waiting room, I am signing [my name] off for two full weeks to recover. Had [my name] been allowed to self certify as is the law, they might only have needed a few days, but due to straining themselves, they now require two full weeks. They are not to be permitted to work until [date 2 weeks later]'

The doctor said she would have signed me off longer but this was the longest she could do without requiring further evidence. So basically, instead of just being off for a few days, I was now signed off for a full two weeks, and I'd be paid for it.

I went to my place of work, at which point one of the duty managers saw me and asked me what the heck I was doing here, go home, I was obviously very unwell. I explained what happened. They agreed to help me downstairs to Steve's office and went with me inside.

I handed Steve the note. He looked worried and tried to say 'I wasn't being serious about firing you.'

Well gee, when you angrily growled it down the phone it sure sounded like it.

The duty manager then declared that they were going to drive me home. It was clear Steve wanted to argue but had the sense to know he shouldn't.

The duty manager then drove me home, made sure I was okay, then went back to work where they informed our union rep of what had happened.

Steve had a disciplinary hearing where he was given a severe reprimand and a warning. Steve tried to argue he never said I'd be fired and I was lying and just decided to go to the doctors, but the duty manager said they heard him admit to it when he said to me that he really didn't mean it.

I felt better after a few days, and enjoyed my two weeks off, fully paid, and enjoyed the nice weather we had. Meanwhile, Steve was forced to work overtime because we were short-staffed. So thanks to the doctor, instead of being off for a few days, I ended up getting a nice two week paid vacation, and Steve was given a final warning, all because he insisted I get a doctors note.

kathjoy

I worked at a company that gave out exorbitant amounts of vacation. Anyone who worked there for 25+ years received 8 weeks of vacation and 2 weeks of personal time. This was a family owned company, but rather large. We ran 3 shifts totaling 250+ people.

Enter Jimmy. Jimmy was a grissled old man, he started at the company when he was just 20, now he was 63 and gave absolutely zero shits. Jimmy also knew how to make a specific part for our product, him and one other higher up in the office.

One day the plant owner comes out and announces he's selling to a corporation. He's older and ready to retire, he promises that there will be very little change and wishes us all well.

The new company comes in and immediately goes after many of the great benefits we had. The first thing they do is cut everyone's max vacation down to 4 weeks, and do completely away with personal time. Anyone who's maxed out had until December 31st of that year to use it up, and they wouldn't pay it out. They then go into the office and clean house, firing anyone who's close to retirement. Including Jimmy's back up.

But they also do away with one very important rule. You no longer have to get vacation approved, you can just call in and take it.

Jimmy is pissed, and they know it. They realize he's the only one in the building that can do his job now. So they hire a new kid for him to train, most likely to permanently replace Jimmy. So Jimmy does what anyone would do. He calls in the first training day for the new hire, and lets us know he's going to use all of his PTO at once, and promptly takes 10 weeks off.

We had a back stock of parts he had made, so it wasn't too unnerving. But for 10 weeks, Jimmy went and applied to other jobs, found one, and started.

Fast forward 10 weeks, Its the day Jimmy is supposed to return. He doesn't. For two days they try calling him, and even go to his house. He's nowhere to be found. Finally on day three he calls and resigns, and they lose their shit. The parts he makes are specialized and patented by the original founder, you can't just hire someone off the street to make them. What eventually happened was they had to contract the original owner to come in a teach some new hires how to make them, and when he found out what all they had done it pissed him off. The last I heard he charged them a 7 figure contract to teach them how to produce the parts, and they had to pony up, or close down.

Moral of the story, don't fuck with people's vacation time.

Rusticwhiskey

I work for a leisure company, think soft play, indoor soccer, laser tag (can't be specific) Prior to lockdown, Managers and the big bosses were negotiating the renewal of the lease on one of our parks. Things were going mostly smoothly, however, the landlords were difficult to contact.

Then 2020 hit the fan.

All of our sites were closed, and everything was thrown into a mess. Negotiations began to slip down the priority list; nobody thought the landlord would push an eviction for an expired lease during this period. Especially with it still getting rent, despite the sites closure, and the closure of every business and restaurant in the immediate area. We were wrong.

A few days ago we received a letter saying we had 7 days to leave the premises and take everything with us. We are reminded that anything left in the building after 7 days will become the landlord's property! (that line is very important).

Now a lot of construction goes into installing our equipment into a new building, which makes emptying one even harder. Add a lockdown, with no staff and most businesses shut, it meant that saving much of our assets would prove to be extremely difficult.

To lose a profitable site and all of its assets is definitely a blow to our company. But here is where it gets worse;

A few days into our 7-day eviction, we find out that the landlord has been advertising our park to our competitors. But he isn’t offering just the building, he is offering ALL OF OUR STUFF PRE INSTALLED. “Ready to go, just needs re-branding.” The landlord has evicted us from the property in an attempt to increase rent and make a solid profit from our equipment installed because he thinks we won't be able to empty the park.

We were furious.

And here is where the malicious compliance came in, we were told we had 7 days to move everything we owned out of the property. so that's what we did. Local businesses from all around offered up free space to store our things, a few people came back out of lockdown and they all spent the rest of the week removing, selling or destroying everything that was related to us. We didn't even leave light fittings.

In every other sight vacation we have seen, we always end up leaving thousands of $$ worth of disco lights in the ceilings because they’re too hard to get. We leave most the construction in, as well as things like the bars and kitchens that all stay intact (recognisable as what they once were) but not this building.

We ripped up the flooring we installed, tore down the walls that were not part of the original structure (Wooden walls to divide up the space) ripped apart our manager's offices and removed all artwork, and lockers.

The landlord now has every new deal he has been making dead in the water, a large renovation bill to install new flooring etc. (or a company willing to do it themselves like we were).

Lockdown has been extended another 4 weeks, so he has at least another 4 weeks without rent (we were paying) and won't have any potential buyers.

Silver lining: The assets we got out of the site (fridges, tv’s, equipment, food, tables) have all been sold, and the lack of rent and additional income has helped the business and paid staff wages.

poshbo

My boss LOVES to call me at 6:15 A.M. to ask me if I would LIKE to fill the shifts of the people who just called in sick.

I was bored and frustrated, so I decided to volunteer at 3:30 a.m. to call this same manager to ask if they needed extra help. He got super-pissed and tried to write me up for it. I showed the GM the time stamps of the calls I had recieved.

I dont get calls anymore.

curiousaboutnow

As part of the plan to return to office post covid, my company has done a lot of re-designating of who can permanently work from home, who can hybrid, etc. I really wanted to work from home full time. I hate the office with a burning passion - it's distracting, it's a long commute, there's no benefit to being there, so on and so forth. I'd just rather be at home.

Well when we thought May was going to be go back to office time they started giving out the new designations. I got designated as in office full time. It made no sense to me. I work on a team of 8 people and each of us is in a different office somewhere in the country. I've literally never been to an in person meeting or needed to do in person work in 3 years at this company. Every single other person on my team got designated to work from home. So I brought it up with my boss and asked to work from home. When I started at this company and lived elsewhere I got to work from home for 4 months before I moved and the past 14 months during covid have been at home, so 18/36 months at the company have been WFH. What I was told is that I go idle too often in chat to trust to work from home.

Basically we have a company wide IM system that shows you as available, idle, or in a meeting. If you don't touch your keyboard for 5 minutes you show as idle. So they've decided to use this as a measure for who is working and who isn't. The thing is, like many people in many types of jobs, I don't have shit to do for a full 8 hours every single day. The amount of work I have to do on a typical day takes 3-5 hours of actual attention. There simply isn't something to do ALL the time. My performance numbers actually went up working from home, by all objective KPI numbers I'm a better worker at home. In fact, in the KPIs that I don't flat out lead the team in, I come in second. There isn't work to do that I'm neglecting or procrastinating, when something comes up I simply do it until it's done or until I can't do anymore due to waiting on someone else then stop. And I've done that method long enough that my work queue stays empty because I worked to get my queue down to the point where when something comes up I can immediately address it and be done with it. But because I have other ways to spend my time in down time instead of messing around online at my cube pretending to be working meaning I show idle more often, I'm a worse worker apparently. I was told if it weren't for that they would let me work at home.

So I wrote a 6 line powershell script that virtually inputs the period key every 4 minutes that starts running every day at 8am and stops at 5pm. So now I literally never go idle. I do the same amount of work and still read books, watch tv, and play video games on the side. But I have a shiny green check next to my name all day.

Because of covid complications they eventually said no going back until after labor day. I just had a meeting with my boss and he said over this time they've noticed I go idle a lot less than I used to so they're changing my designation to work from home, all because of a little icon in some software. This concludes my TED talk on why low to middle level managers are the dumbest, most useless do-nothing positions in all of corporate America

ythafkigetsuspend

Gather round as I tell you the story of the time I got fired at the worst place I have ever worked.

From day one, it was a nightmare. There was 0 onboarding or training. I was simply given the log-in info for a couple of different websites and told to get to work. This company planned large conferences and I was in charge of speaker coordination. I was the only person in this role. The information solely resided with me.

Not a big deal, I say to myself. I'm good at thinking on my feet. I'll just ask questions when I need clarification on something.

That turned out to be impossible. My manager's first language wasn't English. I'm all for learning new languages. I think it's a great skill to have and it takes a lot of work and being able to speak multiple languages is impressive. The problem was that her English was so poor that it was often very hard to understand what she was trying to say.

I once asked if she had time to hop on a call and explain something to me and she responded with "No cranne. Self skills is a must. I am bird without head". It took me a few days to figure out that she was trying to say that things were hectic, she was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, and she needed me to be self sufficent.

Regardless, I did my best in the position. Small mistakes happened here and there but overall all the speakers were very happy and felt well supported. I struggled on the communication with my manager, but I thought the company was happy with my work.

Until 4 months in when I was randomly pulled into a meeting with my manager, HR, and legal.

Effective immediately I was fired. I asked why I was being fired and why this was the first I had heard of any problems. Why wasn't there a write up or a verbal warning?

My manager said it was because the ten minutes (I ran the analytics) it takes me to respond to an email was too slow.

That was a bullshit reason and we all knew it. If you don't like me personally, fine but don't try and make this seem like I was a bad employee. To be honest, I was furious.

We do the exit interview with HR and then she asks me to send over any documents I had (we worked on personal computers remotely) and describe where I was at in regards to our next event and our speakers. NDA's are really common in this field, I've signed one at every job I've ever worked. But this employer's NDA had a clause in it that worked to my advantage.

I said:

"As per my NDA, I am not to discuss intimate details or share documents relating to this position with any employer- past or future. Since this firing was effective immediately, you are now a former employer and I am bound by my NDA"

HR hemmed and hawed a little bit telling me that of course I could speak to them about it, this was about their event.

I pulled out my copy of the NDA (always save contracts) and pointed out the exact clause and said that it clearly stated that if I violated this NDA I would be sued, so no, I couldn't talk to them about the position.

HR turned to Legal and Legal pointed out that I was technically correct. They were a former employer and I was bound by my NDA

They fired me 17 days before the event. They didn't have time to start over from scratch. I still keep in contact with some of my coworkers and apparently the event was a shit show and manager nearly lost her job because of it. Over half the speakers pulled out once communication broke down.

All because I ~tAKe ToO lONg tO ResPoND tO EMaILS~

cranne

My Father worked for a Forbes 500 company since the 70s. Moved up the ranks as a software engineer and management, has patents for the company that saved it millions of dollars. He's almost to pension age and suddenly HR starts making his life miserable. He noticed this trend was happening to some of his coworkers when they were getting close to age 60 as well.

HR Lady calls him into the office and says that he was not punching in and out at the correct time. My Father, an engineer, is very very detail oriented. He knew that these were false accusations and asked HR to prove it. They came back a week later and couldn't prove it. And he said, "Of course you can't. I have been driving the corporate carpool bus from [A major city 40 miles away from the company] for the last 15 years. I always have 16 witnesses on my clock in time and I haven't been late in 15 years."

HR Lady came back a week later and they said that they were going to fire him for letting people into the building without badging. He asked to see when and where he was letting someone into the building without badging. They showed that he held the door for his best friend who had also been working there since the 70s who had his foot cut off after having type 2 diabetes. He was in a wheelchair.

Prior to this my dad took the chief of security out for lunch and told him about how this company wanted him to leave before he got his pension so he got some footage of his own. My dad said, "That is very interesting. You are going to fire me for holding the door for my best friend of 35 years after his foot was amputated and he was in a wheelchair? Fine then I hope you fire the CEO and yourself as well!!!" He then proceeded to show footage of the HR lady holding the door for his friend and the CEO holding the door for his friend.

My Father ended up staying there until he got his pension.

Sorkoth1

This was a long time ago but I remember it clearly. We moved in to a community with tight space in between our house and our neighbors, and we didn't like them being able to see into our kitchen. We put up a bunch of plants, costing thousands but my parents thought it would be worth it. A week later my parents awoke to the plants completely chopped down. My father was furious, and marched down to our neighbors house. He told my father the plants were on his property line, therefor he had total right to take them down. He warned that if anything were to go on his property again, he would report us to the authorities immediately.

Later that day my father called the company that put in the plants, and with the warranty we could have them replanted next week for no charge. We made sure there was no way it was on our neighbors property. However a few days later we caught him chopping them down at 2am. We called the police upon obstruction of property, and after a chat with my neighbor he decided to call a professional and mark his property line. My father agreed.

A few days later i got home to find orange tape in my neighbors yard. Apparently, his fence was 11 feet over our property line! We watched as he took down his fence, completely furious. Within the next month we were enjoying our new space and privacy in our backyard, and my neighbor ended up losing 1/4th of his backyard. My neighbor ended up having to pay almost 10k for the destruction of our property, and we got to plant our plants again.

BalloonUnderstudy

My coworker, and absolute hero, maliciously complied at security on one of our subcontractor jobs. The customer was a manufacturer for high end electronic components. Security was tight as a small 4" x 6" box could contain $250,000 worth of microchips. Our team was installing equipment in their facility for one week. A security checkpoint had to be passed every trip in or out of the building.

Mr. Security guard, Chad maybe, decided my coworker, Steve probably, was more suspicious than the other 4 techs. So every trip in or out, not only was Steve made to dump his entire contents of his backpack out on the table and go through it, Chad required Steve to show him the last 5 pictures taken on his phone "to prove he wasn't stealing secrets."

This is all fine, except Chad let's everyone else through without any sort of inspection. Steve is trying to stay positive, but obviously this is eating away at him. Steve tries to be overly positive and also a bit snarky with comments like "thank you Paul Blart, for keeping America safe," which busts up the rest of our crew. Then, Steve has the idea that will free him the rest of the week.

Wednesday comes along, Steve is overly scrutinized on our way in as usual. As we head to security at lunch, Steve says he has to go to the bathroom. He comes back out a few minutes later, absolutely giddy.

Chad Blart, mall cop, stops us on our way out and asks Steve to see his camera roll. Steve gladly hands the phone over. Chad is greeted by some very peculiarly angled shots of Steve's butthole.

"What the F@%$?" Chad throws the phone down on the table.

"Oh, sorry. I thought I had a hemorrhoid and wanted to see how bad it was. Is everything ok with my pictures? Is the facility safe?"

Chad never checked Steve's materials again. Good on you Steve.

stuufthingsandstuff

Kentucky passes law that all schools must have "In God We Trust" displayed.

"The new law is required as a result of legislation filed by State Rep. Brandon Reed, a Republican minister from Hodgenville. It said in part that beginning in the 2019-2020 school year, local boards shall require each public elementary and secondary school to display the national motto of the United States, “In God We Trust,” in a prominent location in the school."

"Fayette Superintendent Manny Caulk said Wednesday afternoon that in complying with the new law, “all schools in our district have been provided a framed version of an enlarged copy of a $1 dollar bill to display in a prominent location.”"

joeshill

This happened several years ago when my ex and I were going through a heated divorce/custody battle. While we were married, we had a couple of conversations about how rich people hide their assets to avoid paying taxes. I've never had enough assets to do this, but she somehow got the idea that I was and told her attorney that I was laundering money and hiding income. It was more likely the heat of the moment as divorce/custody battles often come down to. I couldn't even afford my own attorney so I represented myself.

Her lawyer wasn't a total ass, but he clearly was out to get me, and he talked down to me like I didn't deserve to breathe the same air. One day, I get a letter in the mail from him requesting an updated income declarations form and 3 years of financials. It had a long ass list of things to include.

I own a communications tech company that was in super startup phase back then. Money was already tight. I was trying to get this business off the ground with no financing, I was finishing my MBA with scholarships and loans, so paying for copies and postage or driving this 30 miles to his office meant eating peanut butter and saltines for a week. So I called him to explain my situation. He all but called me a liar and didn't believe I couldn't afford it.

I was put off by that, and I said this was taking time away from business I needed to handle. To which he replied (and I'll never forget this), "Well, according to your income declarations, you're not that busy. What do you do all day?" He then said if he didn't get these documents, he would consider my previous filings as fraudulent tell the judge, contact the DA, and also alert the state tax agency and IRS. Probably an empty threat, but I'm no lawyer.

Efax is one of the services my company provides, and at this time it was relatively unknown. So I asked him if he has a fax machine. He said he had a fax/scanner/copier device, then said what law office doesn't have a fax machine? And I suddenly got an idea. Okay, I said to him, I'll put together and fax whatever I can.

Okay, motherfucker. You want 3 years of financials? You got it.

I scanned-to-PDF every receipt I could find. McDonald's receipt from 5 years ago? Fuck it, won't hurt to include it. CVS receipt? It's 3 miles long, perfect. They get the $1 off toothpaste coupons too.

I downloaded every bank statement, credit card statement, purchase orders from vendors, and every invoice I sent to clients. I printed to PDF the entire 3 year accounting journal, monthly/quarterly/annual balance sheets, cash flow statements, P & L's. Not only did I PDF 3 years of tax filings, but every single letter I received from the IRS and state tax agency, including the inserts advising me of my rights. It took awhile, but I was a few days ahead of the deadline!

I made a cover page black background with white lettering. Wherever I could, I included separator pages in all caps in the biggest, boldest font that would fit on the page in landscape: 20XX RECEIPTS, 20XX TAXES, etc. I merged everything into a single 150+ page compressed PDF and sent the document using my Efax system. Every hour or so, I received a status email saying the fax failed. Huh, that's weird. Well, they're getting this document. So I changed the system configuration to unlimited retries after failures to keep redialing until it went through. Weird, I was still getting status email failures. I'll delete the failure emails and keep the success one after it eventually goes through, I thought. Problem solved.

Two days later, a lady from his office called and asked me to stop sending the fax. Their fax/scanner/printer/copier had been printing non-stop. It kept getting paper jams, kept running out of ink and they had to keep shutting it off and back on to print.

I explained that her boss told me to send this by the deadline or else he would call the DA and IRS. Since I didn't want a call from the DA or the IRS, I would keep sending until I get a success confirmation. I suggested they just not print until my fax completes, but she didn't like that.

She asked me to email the documents, and I told a little white lie that my email wouldn't allow an attachment that big. Unless her boss in writing agreed to cancel the request or agree to reimburse me for my costs to print and ship, I said I would continue to fax until they confirm they have received every page.

She put me on hold, and the attorney gets on the line. He said forget sending the financials. I said that I would need this in writing, so I will keep sending the fax until he sent that to me. He asked me to stop faxing and he would send it in writing, and I said send it in writing first and then I'll stop.

Long moment of silence... click.

About 20 minutes later, I received an email from his assistant with an attached, signed letter in PDF that I no longer needed to provide financials. The letter then threatened to pursue sanctions in court or sue me for interfering with their business. Every time I saw him after that, the lawyer never brought up sanctions, lawsuits, criminal referrals, or financials again.

FederalAnt9

I'm a paramedic. A few months ago, we're coming back from a routine patient transfer when at an intersection about four blocks from the base I notice a woman sitting on the side of the road with her arms wrapped around herself and her head down.

I nudge my partner who's driving, and we flip on the lights and I see her head come up real fast, and she looks terrified. I get out and she relaxes when she sees the ambulance. After I approach, I notice bruising on her wrists and other similar signs of domestic abuse.

She seems hesitant to get up off the curb.and into the ambulance, so I decided that I would at least pull the cot out of the back and give her something a little more comfortable than concrete to sit on.

Now a few important details. All the cots in my service are Stryker powered cots. You've almost certainly seen these before. They're bright yellow with black handles and side panels. These cots have a motor and battery built in to allow us to raise and lower the cot at the touch of a button instead of throwing out our backs having to physically lift the cot up after loading someone. They're usually paired with an automatic loading system built into the ambulance that lifts the cot up to the right height to be pushed inside and also secures the cot when loaded. There's a little red tab at the end of the track, just inside the doors, that you press down to free the cot and allow it to slide out. When you press this tab, it simply releases the cot and the loading carriage it's connected to and it's up to you to keep it under control until it reaches the unload position and locks into place again. This can be problematic because these cots weigh about 125 pounds, about 55kg.

As soon as I hit the release tab for the cot, I hear lights and sirens behind me. It's a city police car. Which is weird because we had not yet requested police, and we were outside the city, in the sheriff's department jurisdiction. We merely informed dispatch that we were stopping to check on a woman at such and such intersection. The woman says something along the lines of "oh god he's here" and moves faster than me seeing free food being distributed at base. She dashes past me and pretty much hurls herself into the ambulance, sitting on the bench seat. The cop is approaching and he's pissed. I put two and two together and slam the ambulance doors shut. Let's call this officer Police Officer Steve, or POS for short.

POS: Is that bi-Is she in there?! Me: Who? POS: You know damn well who I am talking about. Me: You mean my patient? I'm afraid I haven't gotten a name yet. POS: Open those doors, I need to talk to her. Me: You're not using my rig as an interview room. You can talk to her at the hospital.

We go back and forth like this for a few minutes, my partner at some point came back to see what the hold up was, but overhead my stonewalling and went back to the cab to call our chief. I continue my routine of deny and delay until a pair of deputies (likely specifically requested for this by the chief) arrive. Oh good, now I have witnesses.

See, we had stopped on an upwards incline. I had hit the release tab on the cot and it wanted to slide back. I had to close the doors so swiftly, I didn't bother pushing the cot back against the stops and locking it in place.

Emboldened by the presence of two deputies, he gets in my face. "Get out of my way or I'm gonna have to charged with obstruction!". Okay. I step out of his way, and he opens the double doors. Between the cot, the monitor, and the jump bag, I'd say there was probably close to 160 pounds contained by those doors. All of which comes barreling out and hits POS square in the chest. He goes backwards and falls on his ass. One of the deputies laughs aloud. The other walks up and kneels down beside the guy. He says "Your shift captain is going be here in five, I wouldn't be here then if I were you." POS gathers himself up and scowls at me, then stomps off.

There is a limited amount that I can say about the aftermath as the trial is not settled yet, but we all know how well charges stick to cops. The woman is now living elsewhere, the cop is still a cop, and I have been getting pulled over at least twice a week ever since then. But the video footage of him getting bodychecked by that cot remains one of the best things I have seen.

ChairCavalry

So I was working at Subway a few years ago and a man came in with his wife and two children. I had all four sandwiches started when the man asked me for the code to the bathroom. The policy was you had to make a purchase to get the bathroom code, but by the way he was doing the potty dance, it was pretty apparent this guy needed to go. Obviously, either he or his wife will pay for the four sandwiches I've already started.

The next day, my boss sits me down and lectures me about how the code is on the receipt for a reason. She watched the tape and see me give the man the code and tells me, "I don't care who it's for. Whether it's your friend, family, whatever, you name it, you do NOT give it the code under any circumstances."

Later on that night, I was working by myself when some guy in a trench coat and greasy long hair came in the side door and said, "Hey man, somebody got seriously f**** up outside." A long line of customers waited for me while I subtly grabbed the bread knife (sharp af) and went around to check. It wasn't the best part of town, so you never know with people.

Anyways, as trenchcoat man stated, someone was seriously f**** up outside. His face was all bloody and he was just a mess. I called 911 and went back to making sandwiches.

Sometime later, a few cop cars and an ambulance showed up. They were doing their business outside and then one of the officers comes in and asks for the bathroom code. Like six hours earlier, my boss told me not to give it "under any circumstances" without a purchase.

I laughed a little and told him what I told all the other customers, "I'm sorry, you have to make a purchase first. You can get a cookie which is $0.?? and then it'll be on the receipt." He didn't realize the laugh was really at myself and how awkward of a situation he unknowingly put me in, nor did I have a chance to explain it before the laugh and the rejection of the bathroom code caused the cop to become straight up furious.

He gives me three warnings to give him the code. Each time I tell him I'm not going to give it to him and the customers are on my side telling him I'm just doing my job. After his third warning, he shook his head and muttered "I can't believe you're interfering with an ongoing investigation," and he uses the walkie on his shoulder to get some information.

About five minutes later, one of the cops handed me a phone. I answered and my manager said, "Are you f****ing serious???" Long story short, the cop got the bathroom code and a free bag of chips.

Stretch_R_mstrong

This happened about 7 years ago, I (M29) used to work in a store whose name sounds a lot like those cops that ride in planes. This particular day I was in the register when a well dressed guy and three women walk in, each takes a cart, start walking around and picking things out.

I was known for my no bs attitude on the register, you throw money at me, give me attitude, w.e, I'll do it right back to ya so when a coordinator comes to me 30 mins later and asks me to take the dude and his girls on my register, I already know we're in for a fun time.

They rolled up with these three carts FULL of clothes and not just any stuff, we talking shoes and boots that costs 300-800, expensive handbags, coats and more, I'm just there thinking "aaaw shit". So they walk up, I start scanning all the while these ladies are being unpleasant. Finally I get thru it all and total comes up to about 3k, dude reaches into his fly ass coat and pulls out a wad of cash, all crisp $100 bills and immediately I knew something was off, so i take the money and go to the machine to check it, first bill, doesn't pass, neither does the second so I turn back around and tell the dude the I can't take the money, before I even get a chance to fully explain, one of the chicks cuts me off and tells me to "take the fucking money and do my damn job"

Cue malicious compliance.

I say "you know what? You got it, let me get the manager so he can help". See at our discretion, we can decline a form of payment, say if two of your cards get declined? Gotta use cash, your cash don't pass? Gotta use a card or we can just tell you to fuck off, but if we suspect you're using fake money, we gotta try and keep you there while we get the cops. So I got to my manager, cash in hand and tell him what's up, he goes to the office and checks the money. Now the dude is nervous but just imagine his pants when two cops walk in and head straight for us, his horrified face made my day.

Cops take my statement and next thing you know all 4 of them are getting arrested, while one of the ladies is screaming and cursing at me, while I tell her in the most innocent voice I can pull off "you told me to do my job!"

redxmoonx

I worked for Company for 14 years. I loved working there for 12 of those years. There were 2 main parts to the job. The first part was the "sales" side of things. This was away from the office, in the customer's location. This involved quite a bit of driving (and on a couple of occasions flying abroad) to work face to face with the customers to deliver a high quality product. We weren't the cheapest, but we were the superior product. And I was the best employee when it came to delivering the product. I consistently got rave reviews from customers for my personal style when it came to delivering the product and executing the customer's vision. I got a huge amount of repeat business and I got a lot of new business through word of mouth with customers recommending the company based on their experiences with me.

The second part was the office side. This was my weaker side. I hated cold calling "potential customers" with numbers I found in the phone book. When it came to answering the phone and speaking to potential customers who initiated contact with us I was fine! But I wasn't great at making the calls. This was my only real not-great part of my job.

So, in the office I wasn't asked to make any calls. Instead I prepared product. Designed new product. Trained new staff members (ended up being one of the biggest parts of my job). I was also the problem solver, helping out whenever and wherever. Filling in for sick employees whenever I could.

I liked the owner and I liked the manager. I liked all the staff who were around me. All in all it was a great job that I was really good at and took pride in.

The company had been doing so well that the owner had slowly expanded over the 12 years since I started working for Company. I had joined about 3 months after he started, so I'd been a part of this expansion. I worked out of my nearest office, but often travelled to other areas to train their staff. I was "loaned out" as it were to other companies to help train their staff. At one point I was a guest lecturer at a University teaching medical students how to deliver complicated explanations to people who don't have the base knowledge that you yourself do.

After 12 years I was on a decent salary. Not massive, but I was happy. Then the owner decided to sell off part of the company. He was selling the area where my local office was. He told me he would love for me to remain as his employee, but I would need to work from a different office. This was either require me to move, or to quadruple (at a minimum) my daily commute. The other option was to remain working from my current office but with a new boss. I chose the second option.

Before the new owner bought the company she worked alongside the staff for a couple of weeks to see how we operated. This was before any of us knew she was about to buy the company. As far as we knew she was just another employee, and she was shadowing us to learn. She came with me on assignments in the field and saw my abilities.

When the sale was announced and we were informed that she was the new owner, everyone was very surprised. She made some sweeping staffing changes. The manager left to start her own business, since the new owner was also going to be the manager. A lot of staff were let go. The secretary, myself and a couple of newer hires were kept on. The new hires were on the lowest wages (not salaries). Anyone who had got to a decent level was let go. Since almost everyone was on a zero hours contract, she was able to do this.

Whilst technically it was a "new company" for the customers it was the same old business. The company still had the same trading name. The only real difference was that there was a new owner and the registered business name was now different. As far as the customers were concerned nothing had changed.

My job for the first few months after the sale was to train up the remaining staff to replace the more experienced staff members who had been let go. I recommended a couple of new hires who I had experience working with in the past. I was open and honest with the owner, and let her know that one of them was a close friend and one of them was my girlfriend. Both were more than qualified for the work and both were happy to join. My friend had recently come back to the country after a year of travelling, whilst my girlfriend could only work during school holidays (worked in a school). The owner gave them both interviews then hired them, since we needed the staff.

Over the next 2 years business started to fall. The reason was simple: The new owner decided to try and maximise profits by increasing prices whilst decreasing the quality of the product. For new customers this wasn't noticeable. They just thought we were expensive and the product wasn't the best. But for old customers who had been with us for 10+ years, they immediately noticed. They were being charged more and were receiving less/worse quality. So the owner doubled down and increased prices again. 95% of our old customers left us. New customers almost never became repeat customers. Complaints sky rocketed.

Whilst all this was going on our staff turnover rate was ridiculous. People left after a few months when they realised that the minimum wage they were being paid wasn't worth it. Under the old owner the average hourly wage for new employees was around 2.5x the minimum wage. This made people care about their jobs and want to keep them. My girlfriend quit. My friend remained, but was looking for something new.

Then I got a phone call. The owner needed me to come to the office. This was unexpected. I had just finished working on location with a customer. My next customer was in 2 and a half hours. It was a half hour drive away. The office was about an hour and 10 minutes away from both locations. If I drove back to the office I would have about 5 minutes in the office before leaving. My mileage was paid above my regular salary, so I was saving the company money by doing this. Also, parking was a nightmare around the second location, so I intended to get there as early as possible to find parking, then read a book. The manager didn't care. She needed me to return to the office. So I did. I arrived back to be handed a letter by the owner. It was informing me of a disciplinary meeting to take place in a couple of days time. I could bring a "witness" along if I so desired.

This knocked me for 6. I was the best employee. I read through her list of complaints about my performance and started working on my defence.

At the meeting I declined to have a witness. Instead I decided to record the audio of the entire meeting on my phone without informing her. Where I live this is legal and I didn't need consent. The boss' witness was her friend who she had met at Yoga and hired for an office role, firing the secretary who had been there long before the takeover.

Every point she raised I could counter. They ranged from the weak:

"You were unavailable to work for a week in August"

"I booked a week's holiday so I could attend my cousin's wedding on the other side of the country and turn it into a holiday."

To the pathetic:

"You were late for work on the 12th of May."

"Is that the day my car broke down and I called the office to let you know?"

"I don't know."

"I do. Here's the receipt from the garage dated May 12th."

To the downright lies. This one I can't write as a quote. Basically, she accused me of gross misconduct for breaking health and safety laws in the way I was delivering a product for a customer. I hadn't broken health and safety laws. I knew exactly what I was doing since, as I've mentioned already, I had been doing this for 14 years at this point. She had witnessed me do this on multiple occasions and had never mentioned it before. Because it wasn't an issue. She even had me train staff in this specific delivery method. Because it wasn't an issue.

She finished her list by telling me that she doesn't want to lose me, but she can't justify keeping such a poor employee at my current salary. I had 2 choices: I could either sign a zero hours contract and work for minimum wage, or she could fire me with 2 weeks notice.

I countered that she would have to give me 12 weeks notice, since my contract guaranteed me 1 week's notice for every year of employment, up to a maximum of 12. She argued that I had only been her employee for 2 years, since before then I worked for the previous owner. I informed her that with how the business takeover had run, it counts as continuous employment. I quoted the exact law and code that backed me up. She asked for a 30 minute break in the meeting to "let me think about her offer". She went to call her lawyer.

When she came back she informed me that since she was firing me for gross misconduct, she didn't have to give me any notice at all. If I wanted to remain and move to the zero hours contract, I could do that today. But if I didn't then she would have to fire me. But because she was nice she would give me the 2 weeks notice. I asked for a couple of hours to go home and think about this. She allowed this.

I knew the reason she wanted me to remain for at least the 2 weeks was because one of our few remaining bigger customers were set to have a product delivery from me in that time. They would only work with me. The owner had tried sending other staff in my place an several occasions, and each time there had been problems. It wasn't the staff's fault. It was just a very difficult delivery for a very specific customer which needed to be perfect. As a result this customer would only deal with me.

I called the office and spoke to the owner. I declined the offer of a zero hours contract and said I would be leaving. She then said she was giving me my 2 weeks notice. I declined her offer of 2 weeks notice. I informed her that if I was being fired for gross misconduct then surely I cannot be relied upon to safely deliver the product. Therefore it would be best for everyone involved if I didn't return to work. She panicked and said that she needed me for those 2 weeks. I feigned ignorance and let her know that I was just thinking about what's best for the company. After all, you can't have unsafe staff delivering your product to your customers. However, if she wanted to rethink the "gross misconduct" accusation then I would work my 12 weeks notice. They were her options. 0 weeks or 12. She chose 12.

For those 12 weeks I worked the same way I had for 14 years. I didn't coast. I didn't slack. I didn't badmouth the company on my way out. I continued to train new staff. I continued to deliver the product in my own, personal, exceptional way. I also got in touch with an lawyer who was a specialist in employment law.

For those 12 weeks the Owner barely spoke to me. She resented the fact that I knew my legal rights and didn't just believe her lies. She hated the fact that I could defend myself. She was petty. She accidentally dropped my mug in the kitchen, breaking it. Most petty of all, she paid for every member of staff in the office to have a spa day... except me. I was asked to work my day off to answer the phones whilst everyone else was being pampered. Nobody knew I hadn't been invited until they arrived at the spa and I wasn't there. Here's the thing; I'm a big fat bearded guy. I have no interest in a spa day. If she had offered it to me I would have thanked her and declined the kind offer. But by pointedly excluding me she was making herself look terrible. For the last 2 weeks I was training up my friend to basically take over from me.

At the end of the 12 weeks my final day came around. The owner had nothing planned. Not so much as a card after 14 years (2 for her). The office assistant manager who had become a friend had got me some presents, but had to give them to me once the boss was gone, for fear of reprisals.

The day after my final day 2 things happened. The first was my friend who I had been training up to replace me quit. He was on a zero hours contract so required no notice. He was unhappy with her treatment of me, and was unhappy that she expected him to do my (previously salaried) job for minimum wage. He hadn't informed me of his plans to leave, and I only learned of it when he knocked on my door in the middle of the day when he should have been at work to let me know.

The second was the owner received a letter informing her that I was bringing legal proceedings against her for constructive dismissal unfair dismissal. I had arranged this with my lawyer to be delivered the day after my final day. According to the office assistant, she went pale and started crying, before leaving the office to call her lawyer.

She refuted my claims for constructive unfair dismissal. Said it was gross misconduct. Tried to come up with some more reasons for firing me. But the truth was that the company was making less money because of her business practices, and I was the highest (and only) salary. I had evidence that I was a great employee. I had evidence that she asked me to move to a zero hours contract. She initially tried to deny this, since the "gross misconduct" fabrication makes no sense if she wanted me to stay. But once my lawyer provided hers with a transcript of the entire meeting along with a copy of the recording, she knew she was fucked. Still, she let the case drag on for over a year. I think she hoped that the legal fees would lead to me dropping the case. Little did she know my lawyer was working on a no-win no-fee basis, whilst hers wasn't. She ended up settling out of court.

The aftermath:

The office assistant who had become a friend quit a couple of months after I left. She hated how I was treated and didn't feel feel safe working for such an untrustworthy boss.

Several former customers contacted me personally to enquire why I was no longer with the company. Apparently the owner was telling them that I just quit. I informed them that I had been fired for cost cutting reasons. They moved their business elsewhere. Several offered me jobs. One went so far as to offer me a part time job and to pay for me to attend college to earn a degree required for them to hire me full time. This was a lovely offer, but they were one of the customers who were a bit too far away to commute, and I wasn't ready to move. In the end I found a new job in a different industry where a lot of my skills transferred over. Currently earning more than I was, working less hours and for better owners.

The business is floundering. COVID left the new owner desperate for cash. She cancelled orders but refused to refund customers money, citing an "act of god" clause in the contracts. The business' Facebook and Google reviews have tanked. Most staff left. The business is still afloat, but barely.

nicklo2k

This happened about 4 years ago, when I got a summer job at my university. The job was working for professors that I had worked with before, and they asked me last-minute to teach a summer workshop to 9th and 10th graders.

So with less than 2 weeks before the camp starts I have a bunch of paperwork to do first, including "clearances" that say I can work with kids. One of these is an official FBI check for which they need my fingerprints. Well, I needed to do the physical fingerprinting right away in order to get the result in time - luckily I was able to book a fingerprinting appointment for that Friday (booked 24 hours in advance, as required) which would be just barely enough time to get the result.

That Friday I catch the subway to campus and it's atrociously slow (I'll admit I should have planned for this - the subway here is always behind). Anyway, I end up slightly late getting to campus so I literally run to the police station, and enter the front room at EXACLTY 5 minutes after my appointment time. I know this because, as I stepped through the door, I felt my phone buzz with what turned out to be a "Your appointment has been cancelled" email.

I speak to the security/cop behind bulletproof glass inside and I learn the appt was cancelled after he checks my confirmation number. Apparently the they are automatically cancelled if you're not checked in within 5 minutes. Obviously this is outrageous, but I'm usually a patient guy: I ask if I can book a new appointment. That's no good since it would have to be Monday or later.

So I grab a coffee from across the street and return to sit inside the police station, to try and solve this with some Googling while I slip into a more and more frantic state of frustration. I can't find anywhere in the city that can fingerprint me before Monday.

But here's what really pushed me over the edge. While I'm sitting there, at this point 30 minutes past my appointment time, someone else comes in for fingerprints. She shows up 5 minutes early. They take her in immediately, and she's out BEFORE her appointment was even scheduled to begin. The entire thing took her about 2 minutes. I point out to the cop behind the glass (as politely as I can) that CLEARLY someone could see me RIGHT NOW because her appointment is already over. Why can't I have the current slot? But, the cop insists that since my appointment was cancelled, my registration info was "no longer in the system" and I can't be seen today.

That's when the idea comes to me and I confirm with him that showing up early is not a problem, because they would have my appt and registration info in the system. You see where I'm going with this.

So I quietly sit back down and take out my phone. About 10 minutes later, I calmly approach him again and say "Hello, I have a new appointment to be fingerprinted. I'm about 72 hours early."

I have never seen such an exasperated sigh in my life. But he checked my new confirmation number and everything was in order. Within 10 minutes, I was walking back out after getting fingerprinted.

theoryofrelativetea

My friend, who is Vietnamese, gets told "Speak English, you're in America!" all the damn time.

It got quite annoying to him, so he eventually decided to do something about it.

He looked up the Native American tribe whose tribe was originally on the land where he lives, went to the tribe's cultural center, told the elderly grandma working there he was tired of being told to speak English in America, and had her teach him how to say "White person/outsider/non-native" in the language as well as some other curse words and what not.

Apparently this made that Native American granny's week, because she went all out and really taught him quite a lot.

And ever since any time some racist tells him to speak English in America he says "Well why don't you speak [Native American tribe's language], we're in [Native American tribe]'s lands! You damn [Native American word for white person]!"

The shockedpikachu.jpg face he gets in response never gets old.

They completely freeze up for a few seconds, before responding in entertaining ways such as gasping for air or pointing their finger angrily or just turning and walking away lol.

Eventually the word spread among my group of friends and quite a few of them- who as immigrants, or even just people who speak a second language, occasionally also get told this- are always chomping at the bit to get their chance to use this response.

Every time some of them finally does they immediately announce it to everyone they know lol and it really never gets old.

laurel_laureate

My father died on Father’s Day 2012. He was divorced and living alone, and I am an only child. So that means that I had to wrap up all of his affairs. This story centers around us trying to get his utilities canceled.

I called in to see what we had to do to get them to cancel. The lady I spoke with on the phone said to send in his certified death certificate. I sent in the certified copy of his death certificate the next day. The next month got another bill. I called again and a new woman answered. She said that because I wasn’t on the account that she had to speak with the account holder. I informed her that the account holder was dead but she wouldn’t budge. I had to make an appointment with a supervisor so she could speak to him herself in person.

I showed up at the board of public utilities with another death certificate and HIS ASHES IN THE CLEAR BAG that they returned his remains in. I plopped them down on the center of her desk and said when she talked to him to tell him that I loved him for me. The woman went pale, flew out her chair, and called the cops.

When they showed up she claimed that I had assaulted her. And yes my dads remains were still sitting in the middle of her desk with the death certificate. The cops questioned me as to why I would do that. I told them the story. The supervisor’s boss was called in and they all stepped away from the desk for a private talk. While they were talking the cops came over to talk to me. They said that I shouldn’t take human remains out in public, but there was no laws that were broken. I said that I agreed with them that it was extreme, but she insisted to speak with him in person. By then they were done talking between themselves. The supervisor’s boss kissed up to me and got it taken care of.

But the story isn’t over yet! I had to call back a few days later to get utilities back to the house in my name. When the person on the phone saw the address and my name, I was immediately put on hold. The supervisors boss that finally helped me got on the phone. She sucked up to me and waived all of the fees that come with setting up utilities. Just as the call was ending, she informed me that she was again so sorry for the employees lack of compassion. She said that the employee was terminated and again she is so very sorry.

PrincessG66

I've been a mechanic my entire working life so far, and this is one of my favorite experiences.

I had a customer come in complaining about a vibration. I put the vehicle on the lift and checked the front end. I found a nearly broken tie rod and a faulty rack and pinion. So basically the passenger side front wheel was not fully secured to the steering system and would soon break and cause the wheel to be completely disconnected from the steering.

I told the customer how much the repair would be and told her it was unsafe to drive. She asked me to put it back together so she could leave. I told her that I could not do that because if it broke after I let her leave, I could be held liable. She started yelling and screaming about calling the cops and suing me and how her cousins brother knows a guy who's related to the chief of police and I'll be arrested.

She calls the police and they come out, I show the officers the vehicle and they understood the safety concern. They told me to just put the car down and let her leave. I did and even made her sign a statement declining crucial safety repairs.

She left with the most "haha, I told you so" smug grin on her face... Until she left the property, got pulled over and her car impounded. They also gave her a ticket for reckless driving.

I was so happy seeing her car get towed.

nsn242

Kids are awesome at malicious compliance - but it is a 2-way street ;)

My kids can be picky eaters at times. My wife made some damn good chicken soup, but the kids were complaining that there were veggies in their chicken soup, they hate veggies, veggies make them sick, and they wanted my wife to pick them out of the soup. We tried to tell them that good chicken soup needs veggies to taste good, but they were being stubborn. I'm sure other parents can understand.

I told the kids "if you really hate the taste of veggies, I'll make soup tomorrow, and you guys can make sure I only put stuff in you like." They liked that idea, at the time.

The next day, I get the pot filled with water, all the typical soup ingredients out, and gathered the kids. I asked for their approval on every item. Chicken - yes, salt - yes, black pepper - no (gross, too spicy), celery - no (I can't even stand the smell), onions - NO!!! It went on with that, with them rejecting parsley, bay leaves, and other veggies. The total contents of the pot ended up being:

--- Chicken, water, salt, noodles

After the soup was done cooking, I served it up and they excitedly started to eat. A few funny faces later, and one of them said "it tastes weird, this isn't very good". I said "but I only put in everything you guys approved. I think, from now on, I should make the soup, right?"

They looked at each other and said "can we have mom's soup instead?" Since that day, they haven't complained about finding veggies mixed in the food. Sure, they almost always eat around a carrot or green pea, but they understand that it adds flavor.

jazzb54

Many years ago, I worked at a car dealership. The attached service garage was small and I was the only licensed mechanic.

I would occasionally have issues with male customers— they would second guess my diagnoses, watch me while I worked on their cars from the bay door, double check my work in the parking lot, etc.

I didn’t deal with customers directly and would often get my apprentice to pull cars in and out of the shop for me.

This morning in particular, we were busy. The lot jockey and apprentice were occupied helping wash cars for delivery and driving to a customer’s house.

The service advisor left a work order and keys at the parts counter, and I went out the front through service to get the car. It was in for a service campaign, which was an update done with a scan tool. It takes about 10 minutes.

The customer was planning on waiting and was sitting in service. When he saw me with his keys in my hand, he immediately stood up, alarmed. I was hustling so I walked right by him and out the door. I missed the following conversation, according to the service advisor (also female):

Customer: “Who is that chick? Is she going to be working on my car? I don’t want her working on my car.”

Advisor: “The other tech is out at the moment, so it’s going to be quite a wait until someone else can look at your car.”

C: “That’s fine. I’ll wait for a guy. I don’t want that chick touching my car.”

A, politely: “Understood.”

The advisor comes to let me know, and I pull the car out and put the work order and keys back on the counter, nonplussed.

Half an hour passes. The apprentice is still away, and I am happily working on something else, bringing other cars in and out.

The customer is now watching each and every person who comes through the door.

The high school co-op student comes in to get something signed. The customer’s keys are still sitting on the desk. It’s been about an hour now.

C: “Hey— why hasn’t my car gone in yet? Can’t you get this guy to do it?”

A: “No, sorry. He’s just a co-op student so he is not allowed to drive the cars due to liability and insurance concerns.”

C: “Just get someone else to bring the car in and he can do the work. This was supposed to take 10 minutes.”

A: “Sorry, sir. He’s just a high school student doing his co-op; he’s not approved to perform warranty work. Only licensed techs and apprentices can do the recall.”

The car jockey returns. The advisor hands the car jockey a different set of keys, and he brings yet another car into the shop for me. The customer is becoming incensed.

C: “I’ve been sitting here for over an hour and I’ve watched 5 cars go in before mine. My appointment was for 8am, this is getting ridiculous,” blah blah blah.

At this point he says that he literally doesn’t care who does the recall, but that it has to be a guy.

The service advisor starts listing off the names of the men who work in the dealership, then saying why they can’t perform the recall.

“Well there’s Harmon, but he’s just the car jockey. He doesn’t know how to work on cars. Then there’s Jeet, but he’s about 17. I wouldn’t want him doing the recall, personally. I guess we could ask Mike— but Mike is the parts guy— he doesn’t know how to use the scan tool. The detailers are men, but they know NOTHING about cars… ”

The customer is fuming at this point, and demands to talk to the service manager.

The manager comes out of his office, and guides the customer into the garage. He’s pretty old school… lights up a cigarette standing at the end of my bay, and points at me.

“That’s my best technician. Those guys take orders from her. You can either wait for her to finish what she’s working on, and then you can ask if she’s still willing to do your work, or you can take your car somewhere else.”

The guy was pretty shook up at this point and he took his car and left, two hours after he’d first arrived. I don’t think we ever saw him again, which was not much of a loss, all things considered.

That manager in particular ALWAYS stuck up for me and took my side. The service advisor has this very dead-pan sense of humour. She knew full well it would easily be an hour before the apprentice would return from his errand, and that no one else could do the recall. This was not the first sexist we had encountered.

unlimitedpatience

I rented a car for five weeks while my car was being repaired from a car accident. The rental company had a couple great policies- no cleaning fee no matter how gross the car was, and unlimited miles. Ideal for me- I live in the country and going anywhere is a drive.

When my car was finally scheduled to be finished (a Monday evening) I called the rental car company on Sunday. Asked about return details. They said return time would be 530pm Monday, but I could just leave it at the shop and leave the keys in the shops drop box. I said sure, and next night I went, got my car, left keys in the box. Got in my car, and check engine light is on. Fuck. Staff says come back tomorrow and we will fix it. I go home thinking that I will be sitting at the shop all Tuesday because no other ride.

Tuesday morning I wake up at 7am to the rental car company very angry and saying that they can't get into the drop box and shop doesn't open til 9. I tell them I just did what they said to do. They told me that they would be charging me an extra day. At that I'm furious. I leave my house later and arrive at the ship at 850. Rental car guys aren't there. I sit around and shop opens, I grab the rental keys and give them my car. Right on time, rental car guys appear. They demand the keys and I ask if I'm still getting charge for an extra day. One guy is inspecting the car while the other tells me yes, I'm getting charged an extra day. Guy inspecting it comes over and days car looks good, it should be ready to rent out immediately. I had cleaned it the day before because I didn't want to be a dick. Well, I refuse to give him the keys. "Since I'm getting charged an extra day, that means it's my car until 530 today, right?". At that he gets nervous. Says they need the car back. "I will give you the keys now if you don't charge me an extra day. But if I'm charged an extra day, I'm using it." He refuses to bend so I leave.

At this point I'm petty and angry. So I go straight home. I own a farm and it has been raining like mad lately. I get to work. By the time 10am rolls around, the car is COVERED in mud. Like, this black car looks painted brown. I didn't trash the inside, because I'm not that petty. I hop in the car and drive to the rental place. I'm pretty covered in mud at this point, I had put trash bags on the front seat to limit it. I walk into the rental place looking like I fell into a mud pit. The guy who refused to cancel the charge looks horrified. I tell them "this car is great for mudding! I'm gonna go mudding for the rest of the day. Just swinging by to ask where to put the keys at 530" I'm all smiles and dripping sweetness. I watch the life leave him, his shoulders slump, and he says if I return the car now they will cancel the charge because they need to rent out the car. I give em the keys and take an uber to the shop, where my car is ready.

No cleaning fee and no extra day charge. Ha!

sabertoothdiego

I worked as a server for a small brand new family-owned restaurant. The place was one step below white tablecloth and had a bar on one side with the restaurant on the other. The owners were awesome and provided industry professionals to train us on how best to treat a customer and maximize our tips. As an example of how effective this training was, on opening day I dropped an entire tray of drinks down a woman's back yet this family returned several more times and would only let me serve them. Owner brought them a parka the first time they returned.

One technique we were taught was to establish who was paying from social cues and make sure they are happy. If a couple comes in and you believe the man is paying, make the woman feel like a queen. When it's time to pay, she'll likely encourage a higher tip. Incredibly effective.

As I finish taking an order I notice a family of four being sat in my section and stop by immediately to introduce myself. My assessment is this: husband and wife (very nicely dressed), their beautiful early-20s daughter (my age), and what I gather is her boyfriend wearing a suit and tie. Dad is very clearly paying, but aspiring businessman here interrupts mom when she's ordering her drink to inform me he'll be ordering for the table. If looks could kill, the father would have taken out this young man and probably 10 people in the bar area. Oh, buddy, your night is NOT going to go the way you thought.

Every time I returned to the table I would face him, only look at and talk to him, turning my back to the father. Daughter asked for something, I don't remember what, and without ever acknowledging her, I asked him, "May she have that?" He barely stammered out a "yes". When I brought the bill, I set it right in front of him. They hung around for a while and I continued to check in and refill drinks while the bill remained untouched. I think dad was making him sweat. Eventually, dad grabs the bill and puts his card in. I brought back the receipt and thanked the young man for coming in and walked away.

I was returning from another table when they were getting up from the table and the young guy moved to the door at a speed that made lightning look slow. The other 3 were all smiles and the dad looks across the dining room and mouthed, "Thank you." I gave him a smile and a nod and continued on my way. The tip amount is a number I don't remember, but I know it was good. Really good.

It must have been a small wedding because I never received an invite.

batkevn

In order to request time off I must fill out a sheet directly below the schedule posted in the "break nook" that all employees can see and it asks for the reason WHY I need the time off.

I don't need every single person in the company knowing my personal business, so I never filled that spot in, and was repremanded for it and refused the time off. I was told I had to give a reason. Enter Malicious Compliance:

I started getting very specific about completely false reasons.

Random Tuesday Dentist appointment? Yep. "Gambling Addiction Counseling."

That Friday I can't work, because I'm just sick of this place and I need a mental health day? For sure. "Testicular Cancer Screening."

Today I was asked to stop filling in the "Reason" box.

NewVoice2040

I work in a hot sauce store in a busy outlet mall. We're a well-liked locally owned business and have many loyal return customers, but at this particular location we also get a lot of tourists who are curious about our challenge items, or "Hot Ones" products.

We have a large variety of samples available every day. Literally like 100 hot sauces, 50+ bbq/wing sauces just out on the table and we can pull another 50+ bottles or so from the fridge if one's open.

Every so often we get people who come into the store and ask to try the hottest sauce. They love jalapenos in their burritos and have eaten habaneros straight and they're ready to enter the ring, swallow some sauce and gain the admiration of a couple friends and bystanders at the cost of a stomach ache. We usually try to guide them to the 10th hottest sauce in the store, burn them with it, and move on to something mild or medium suited to their taste.

Today while I was selling items to people who were actually paying for things, a 10-or-so year old boy enters the store. I always get wary when children enter the store alone because it is full of glass bottles. They usually dart straight for the shelves and pick something up, but this child came barreling towards me like a bullet.

While I make change for the couple buying some sauce, he calls out to me, "Excuse me!", in a horrendous whiny pitch. I ignore the rude interruption and continue my conversation with my customers. He parrots it again twelve times or so back to back as I thank these people and get them out of the store. Finally, I turn to him, "How can I help you?". Where the fuck are this kid's parents.

"Hi can I try the hottest sauce in the store." Not this shit again. I am not dealing with this, not with a 10 year old kid. I explain to him that the hottest sauce on the table is Hellboy: Right Hand of Doom. It's spiked with a 6.66 Million scoville extract, and honestly if you're not experienced with this kind of stuff more than just a tiny bit can really mess up a good part of your day. Take my word for it.

I explain to him he has to be 19 years old to try it and sign a waiver (which is bullshit, but I'm off in 30 minutes so fuck this kid), and instead guide him to a tasty fermented habanero that he coughs his eyes out on before explaining to me that he could handle the Right Hand of Doom because his dad eats spicy peppers with him all the time. "Okay." I say. He leaves, thank God.

15 Minutes later I'm interrupted by another customer. This time a gigantic woman, in a blue blouse, she's set next to my sample table like a giant blueberry blocking up 20% of my floor space. "Excuse me!" Apple doesn't fall far. The customers I'm with are polite and excuse me to speak to her. "You didn't let my son try the sauce!"

I explain to her that it has extract in it several hundreds times hotter than anything he has ever eaten and that it can cause him severe discomfort and that I will not let him try it in my store. I explain that she is free to purchase the sauce and have him try it at home if she so wishes. She explains to me that she married a Mexican man and that I wouldn't believe the things we ate in "New Mexico City" where he grew up. When I asked what they had eaten there she told me "Things hotter than anything we have in the store".

At this point her daughter interrupts our conversation, I shit you not, "Excuse me!"

"What?" I'm getting annoyed. I was annoyed from the second I saw the kid and now he's back 20mins later with three of him. "Why do you sell Valentina it's not even a hot sauce?" Jesus Christ. Aren't you from Mexico? It says fucking Salsa Piquante on the God damned bottle. It's 5:50, I'm off at 6. I've had enough.

"How about this, you can try the sauce and if it's as mild as you think, I'll let him try it." She agreed and grabbed her sample stick. I reached for the Right Hand of Doom, and unscrewed the cap. It's nuclear aroma sending memories of aches to my stomach. As she goes to dip the stick into the sauce, I warn her to "only take a small amount". She grins at me and dips the stick all the way into the sauce. Trap card, bitch. She slaps it into her mouth.

Immediately she looks uneasy before she throws herself into pure agony. She is coughing, swinging her head back and forth, trying desperately to speak, but she cannot muster any words. She dropped her sample stick in all the chaos. After a solid few minutes of coughing and dry heaving, she manages a single word, "water." I explain to her that water won't help her now. My relief walks through the door just in time to witness the finish.

She tells me that the only reason she is coughing is because "it went down the wrong pipe." She then immediately vomits into our garbage can. She apologizes for "spitting up" like she didn't just rocket launch half a litre of chum into my trashcan and then leaves without saying anything else.

I tossed out the trash with a smile on my face and clocked out.

Arayvenn

Yesterday I decided to take my kids to an international chain restaurant. In this restaurant, the kids' meal comes with ice cream. But, you have to serve yourself.

That was a problem because there weren't any bowls beside the ice cream machine.

So I thought, "I know what to do. I'll simply ask an employee for some bowls." And that's just what I did.

So he turns to look at the vast array of bowls behind him, some sauce-sized, some entree salad-sized, and many in between. And we realize that neither of us knows what size the kids' ice cream is intended to be.

So he thought, "I know what to do. I'll simply ask a manager." And he says, "hey boss, what do we put the kids' ice cream in?"

Without turning around, the boss says "a fucking bowl, what do you think?"

"Ya, but what size of bowl?"

The boss, with his inimitable charm, tact, and grace, says "JUST FUCKING GIVE HIM A BOWL."

The employee looked back at the bowls, and then I saw him get a big grin over his face.

"I apologize about that, sir. I think it's probably these ones," he says, as he hands me two of the largest bowls they have in the restaurant, practically giggling with glee.

My children were similarly delighted.

The manager walked by when we were half way through and made a noise like a startled opossum, but said no actual words.

Definitely going back there.

Mango123456

Between eight and ten years ago I received an email welcoming me to Netflix. That was a bit concerning since I hadn't signed up so I contacted the company. They told me someone must have accidentally used my email when they created an account. Our last names were the same and our first initial. I said Oh no problem, you must have additional contact information for them besides my email, could you please remove my email from the account and let them know so they can fix?

Well, immediately that was a big problem for Netflix and well, no they couldn't remove the email because it was the only one they had for the account and how did they even know that it was mine? I said give me your email address and start talking, I will email you the words as they come out of your mouth. That wasn't good enough for proof somehow. More likely I was in the other person's Gmail account asking to not have Netflix?

What they finally ended up doing was changing the account password so that when the customer went to log back in they wouldn't be able to and would need to do a password reset by calling Netflix and then they would confirm the email address. I kept getting Netflix emails so that didn't work - I called again, same again - didn't work. I changed the password several times myself because I could use the forgot password function and get an email to reset it, that didn't work. I don't know how they kept getting the new password without updating an email address and I didn't really care at this point.

For the last eight to ten years I have had Netflix on everything thing I own. I have signed in on hotel televisions, used it on my phone, my XBOXs; My kid uses it. I only ever signed in under "Family" and told him to do the same. The entire history in "Family" is us. The other logins, "Fred", "Softee", and "Lylla" accumulated history. I would occasionally look because, curious. Never did a single new show appear in the "Family" watch history that wasn't because of me.

Well, I woke up this morning to an email from Netflix telling me that this email address was no longer associated with that account and if I had any questions etc.

Thank you Softee! It has been an amazing run and I am not sure why you gave me free Netflix for the last decade but I think you are amazing!

SoftPocketss

Work a second job at an Amazon sort center. I quit on 10/28 due to needing to do a covid quarantine and HR not answering on putting me on the leave plan. If you go into negative leave time Amazon cans you and you can't apply again until at least 90 days.

Amazon is easy money for me and I use it as an additional workout throwing multiple thousands of packages in a 3-5 hour shift. You see why I wanted to keep the job for easy money. I applied back on 10/29 and was technically starting back last night.

I was offered a shift last Friday night and Sunday afternoon with an extra 3 dollars an hour and took it. Worked 8 hours and then went back in last night at 830 pm for my " first"shift back. Learning told me I had to take the 9 hours of new hire education split between last night and tonight.

All the staff knows me and I am literally getting paid to do nothing. I love using their loopholes against them. I also need to mention, I am also getting their 3000 dollar signing bonus

fuzzyrugby

I've been living in Japan for a little over two years with my husband. He was born here and we decided to move to his hometown. It's a small city, but there's enough to do without getting bored. I'd describe us as an AMWF couple (Asian man, white female for those who don't know). It's not so common in western countries, and it can feel like we are some rare shiny Pokemon as AMWF in rural Japan-lots of staring, occasional secret picture, or even small chats if an old lady is brave enough to approach us. It can feel uncomfortable eating at a restaurant because kids will turn around in their seat and stare at us the whole time with an open fish mouth. Coincidentally, there's a small U.S. military base located in this city. The closer you are downtown, the more American families you see. I'm constantly mistaken for being military by Americans and Japanese which is understandable. Besides myself, I only know 5 other interracial marriages here. It's always locals who ask about my 'American husband' when I'm out alone, which I respond in Japanese "Watashi no otto wa nihonjin desu. Koko ni sunde imasu" (My husband is Japanese and I live here) or something along those lines. Americans never ask about my marriage as they assume my spouse is American. When we are together in public, we do abnormal couples behavior such as holding hands (no, couples rarely hold hands in public, let alone say 'I love you').

We don't go downtown too often since it's all pay to park and it's a nightmare to find a place. It was a beautiful warm day for the first time in months, but we decided to battle for a spot and walk around the shops. The crowd was heavy since the weather was great and winter was ending. The season for new American families to move here just finished, so I'm sure this was many peoples' first time to leisurely walk and shop outside.

We find a parking spot and made our way to the outside shops. Of course, we are holding hands and casually talking and laughing.

"WOW." I hear this from an American woman about 10 feet behind us. You should know that a Japanese stereotype against Americans is that we are rudely and obnoxiously loud. And this 'wow' was loud enough for me to turn my head around at the noise. She was with 2 other moms who had like, 3 kids each. They were staring at me, but perhaps we just accidentally had eye contact at the right time.

"Seriously, another little homewrecker is doing this in PUBLIC?" Chill woman, you're so loud even I can hear you. We find a table nearby at the Starbucks outside. We are enjoying our drinks when the same group of women approached us with their strollers in tow. They definitely had some sort of purpose with something to say to us. Let's call her Onna (woman in Japanese).

Onna: "Excuse me, but you need to keep whatever you're doing in your messed up home. Doing that in public in front of families to see is disgusting and immoral. My kids don't need to see such a bad display of marriage."

I'm SO confused, as was my husband who can speak English. Who knew drinking coffee outside was a crime against humanity and marriage?

Me: "I`m sorry? What...did we do?"

Onna: "You know exactly what you're doing." *She points to my wedding ring*

Me: "No, I don't...."

Onna: "Good lord, does your husband know about this? Is he on a ship right now? That's soooo like a dependapotamus!" Her friends laugh. In case you don't speak military, a dependapotamus is slang for a military wife who stays at home all day, doesn't clean, uses their spouse as an ATM, and looks like Jabba the Hut. It dawns on me; she thinks I'm a military spouse and I'm cheating on my American husband! I started laughing because she's suggesting I'm cheating on my husband, with my husband!

Me: "This IS my spouse. I'm actually not part of the military community and have a Japanese visa." Onna looks at my significant other up and down. The two women behind her apologize, but the Onna didn't believe it.

Onna: "No one would voluntarily WANT to live in this little town. Nice lie, but you're not representing the military community. You make all of us wives look like whores! Who is your husband and what's his rank? Also I need to your dependent ID. MY husband is a high rank so he'll make sure your husband is aware of your infidelity." She pulls out her phone to probably type my response. I'm offended since this is actually a nice place to live and very open to foreigners.

Me: "Look, my husband's name is Rei (not his real name; I don't want to reveal personal info) and he's sitting right here. I'm not going to show you my military ID since I don't have one, and you're not the police. As proof, you can obviously see our wedding bands match and here's a picture." I show her my phone screen which is of us in traditional Japanese clothes on our wedding day. Her eyes became huge at the picture. Her two friends and their spawn have already started walking away.

Onna: "Why are you in a relationship with HIM? You should be in a normal relationship and start having a family with American kids." She says some other statements which I'd consider racist against the Asian race. It's so ironic because we are in JAPAN, and she's fussing about me being married to a Japanese man. My husband has been quiet throughout the whole exchange and says to me we should go. I agree and stood up.

Me: "STOP. The things you are saying are extremely offensive. I was part of the military community myself some years ago and what you're doing is against spousal conduct."

She smirked. "Go ahead and tell people what I did, then. My high ranking husband is an E-7, and everything will be swept under the rug no matter what happens. You can't touch me."

So that's what I did.

Note, this is a small military community. Someone does something minor and it's talked about between wives like chickens. Later that day, I run into my friend who works on the base and she's well known in the community for being one of the main event coordinators. I don't miss this chance to comply with Onna's demand, and explain to my friend about the exchange and how it made my husband extremely uncomfortable with her remarks. She asked me if this person looked like so and so, which I said yes. My friend rolls her eyes.

Friend: "She just arrived a couple months ago and is already causing problems with rumors and drama. Looks like we have a racist, too. I'll make sure what she said is passed on."

It's been half a year later and I didn't hear anything about Onna again since I distanced myself from making military friends here. I've only been in my new city for a little over 2 years and experienced more drama from military families than I have my whole high school career. That is, until now. Last week, I ran into my friend who's getting ready to leave back to the United States. We had a little discussion about her moving and my family planning, and dropped a bombshell.

Friend: "Do you remember Onna, who accused you of cheating on your non-existent military spouse and called your husband a racist name?"

Me: "Of course! I haven't heard anything from her since."

Friend: "Well, I mentioned we were already having problems with her not long after she got here. I told my boss that there's a person who was bothering and threatening civilians and asking for IDs which isn't allowed for someone with her status. My boss was extremely interested after I mentioned her name because Onna was scheduled for an interview in my department! I suggested we look at her social media accounts from her past behavior, because we don't tolerate racism. It was easy to find her Twitter and Facebook, particularly Facebook since we have many mutual friends. Her SNS was SHOCKING. While she set her Facebook to private, her Twitter was littered with malicious Tweets and reTweets. This included racism slang for many nationalities, colorful language, and using her husband's military rank to bully others. She made it very clear that she 'wants to see her current city burn to the ground' and 'why would anyone want to learn Japanese since it's sounds terrible'. We printed some of the more extreme things she posted and we still invited her to the interview.

"Oh, and did I mention my boss is JAPANESE?!!"

"So she comes into the interview which I was part of. I asked three good things about her which is she says 'dependent, gets things done, and friendly.' My boss just looked at her for a second before he pulled out her Tweets and asked her to explain how she can friendly serve the local community if she hates it so much. Onna was FLOORED and said someone hacked into her account, despite there being at least 3 years of slanderous Tweets. We thanked her for coming and said we can't accept an employee with this conduct. As far as I know, she's still not working because some spouses found her Twitter not long after the interview and was shared in all departments. No one will touch her application now."

Me: "So all of this was discovered because I told you about her accusations?"

Friend: "Yes! Oh, and she's kind of an outcast socially right now because she cheated on her husband a couple months ago."

There you have it folks. Because one person couldn't mind their own business, they lost a potential job and had their social media exposed. Super ironic since she became the dependapotamus and adulterer-the same thing she was accusing ME of.

heterochromia_cat